Whole Life Gardening

Archive for October, 2008

Do you want a small maple tree that is extremely stylish in the spring and breathtakingly colorful in the fall? Meet Acer japonicum ‘Aconitifolium’ – the thread-leaf full moon maple. This tree grows only 8 to 10 feet tall and wide, making it the perfect plant for those small places where you want a tree, [...]

I can think of few better examples of an ending being a beginning than a first frost. As gardeners we don’t want our beautiful annuals or delicious vegetables to die, and as human beings we hate to lose anything good. And yet, loss forces us to move on. The frost that hit last week – [...]

It is the end of October and we are planting bulbs at Poison Ivy Acres. Lots of bulbs. Today we put in 330 Narcissus bulbs – several varieties. Most of the bulbs we planted were from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs and boy was I impressed with them. We’d placed a large order with Brent and [...]

My “I Love This Plant” on GardenLine this week is Zauschneria garrettii ‘Orange Carpet’ – common name Creeping Hummingbird Trumpet. I got this plant from High Country Gardens a few years ago and I’ve loved it ever since – in fact, I got some more to plant in my new dry garden. This perennial grows [...]

Every week on my radio program, GardenLine, I start the show off with a segment called I Love This Plant/I Hate This Plant. Needless to say, the plants that I love far outnumber the ones that I hate. As I stood looking at the plant I will feature this week on GardenLine, it dawned on [...]

I went into the garden in a reflective mood this morning after reading A Sacred Journey at breakfast. An article by Rabbi Robert Freedman and another by Erika Hastings got me thinking about gardening as a form of prayer. Of course it’s possible: anything, art, dance, music, and yes, gardening, can be a way to [...]

I think that this is a product that shouldn’t be sold. It appeals to people because it seems to solve the weed problem permanently, and for a year or two it works well as long as you don’t mind looking at the acres of bare mulch – hardly an improvement over weeds – that it [...]

And you know I’m not talking about stocks. I”m talking about remembering to share the garden as often as possible. The days go by and I get busy…there’s work, lot’s of work, and family in distant places. There’s my elderly neighbors who need help and have no family. Did I mention work? So weeks [...]